Chimamanda Adichie In Conversation at City, University of London

our evenings event tonight Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a in conversation celebrates the launch of the Department of English in the School of Arts and Social Sciences here at City University of London this academic year we've only been a department since September rolling in the second year of a BA English Program and an innovative and unique approach which combines the traditional study of literature in English with creative and professional writing it's an exciting time for us as we work to develop postgraduate programs in English and to reshape and revision our long-standing postgraduate programs in publishing and creative writing I'm deeply honored to introduce our guest this evening the internationally renowned Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a Miss Adichie a first came to international recognition with the publication of her first novel Purple Hibiscus in 2003 the novel a searing account of the ways in which domestic violence impacts a family in post-colonial Nigeria went on to win the Commonwealth writers prize and the Hearst and Wright legacy award for 2006 novel half of a Yellow Sun is set prior to and during the Biafran war it too won many prizes including the top prize for female writers the Orange Prize which is now called the Bailey's women's Prize for fiction and was adapted as a film of the same name released in 2013 her most recent novels of 2013 Americana which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the top ten best books of the year by the New York Times with its range across three continents in its span of decades americana richly showcases miss a DJ's keen eye for detailing the impact of global and racial tensions on the lives of her characters it examines black experience in Nigeria London and the US through an array of lenses including identity and relationships community ethnocentrism privilege class migration and appearance and even hair DJ has also published a number of celebrated short stories many of them collected in the 2009 that thing around your neck she's received so many awards and honors I'm not going to list them all sorry about that including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship aka the genius grant in 2008 as well as honorary degrees from Johns Hopkins University Haverford College and the University of Edinburgh she has become a celebrated for her interventions into contemporary debates about race and feminism as she has for her fiction her 2014 TED talk we should all be feminists has helped invigorate a wave of feminist activism and arguably laid the foundation for our current moment of feminist awareness with the rise of time's up and me two movements as well as the possibility that a sitting US president might be brought down by a porn actress named stormy Daniels gives new meaning to that old Bob Dylan line the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked we should all be feminist was published as a book in 2015 another essay on feminism dear eg away lay or a feminist manifesto and 15 suggestions developed out of a friend's request that missive DGA explain how to raise a feminist daughter published in 2017 the essay captures miss a DJ's gift for focusing on the specifics of Nigerian women while at the same time touching on the vexed sexual politics that characterize gender relations in other parts of the world as one reviewer wrote we need to know the capacious volatile Nigerian contemporary culture where a daughter might be told to bend down properly while sweeping like a girl or tease that she is old enough to find a husband also includes a DJ and her friends they demand the whole lot for women everything any woman could want anywhere full equality and opportunity for selfhood and education sexual freedom and freedom from shame shared childcare and domestic work their own surnames the old asks which in the UK seemed to have shrunk to conventional piety or surface adjustments strained uneasily over complex realities recovery their freshness in a new context the thinking that informs mr. DJ's well-known 2009 TED talk the danger of a single story is particularly significant to me and my fellow English department staff members as we work to develop a global and transnational curriculum that does not simply reproduce the limitations and biases of the study of English literature in traditional English departments in her talk mrs. HEA struts stresses the danger of cultural under-representation drawing upon her personal experiences of growing up and reading stories in which the characters were primarily Caucasian now I love those American and British books I read she comments they stirred my imagination they opened up new worlds for me but the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature as we move forward with developing our curriculum we will be ensuring that the literature's and English that we teach include all the places and people across the globe whose stories can and must be heard as Salman Rushdie was famously commented English Lit has never been in better shape because the world language now also possesses a world literature which is proliferating in every conceivable direction the English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago her work adds immeasurably to that global conversation she will be in a somewhat smaller conversation tonight with dr. Louisa Eggman Ikki a lecturer in our department who joined us in September dr. Edmund Ikki received her PhD from so as in 2015 with the dissertation entitled the ebo experience in the ebo Nigerian novel which explores contemporary literary representations of the development of a pan ego identity a second project cartography zuv resistance Brixton in the black British imaginary identifies Brixton as a space of protest cultural production and dispossession dr. Edmund iki has published extensively on black writers including Bessie had gucci mo chedda Chinna watch FA and miss Aditya herself an act of an engaged scholar who is committed to studying writing about and teaching works that record contemporary black experience in Britain Nigeria in the u.s. dr. eggman iki recently curated an exposition and exhibition which launched at so as of January of artists responses to the legacies of Biafra the exhibition will open at the Africa Center later this year and then we'll go on to tour internationally dr. eggman Miki was also named as one of the new generation thinkers by the BBC a HRC a small group of ten early career researchers whose remit is to create content and generate new ideas for EBC Radio 3 she has done a Sunday feature on afrofuturism in an African context and produced a short film for BBC arts online on her father's account of living in Britain during the Biafran war please join with me in welcoming our speech [Applause] a good evening everyone can you hear me okay can I just start by saying what a pleasure and honor it is to be fat here with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and thank you very much for coming and joining us here at City is as Patricia said or a new department and I think we're launching really with a with a bang this year and this is this is part of that bang so thank you be part of our part of our bang so so I've got a series of topics and there's gonna be ample time for Q&A afterwards but just to start with what are you reading whenever I'm asked that question I go blank and then afterwards I remember but I want to say I'm happy to be here I'm here because of Louisa really and I'm here because of Louisa and Yvonne who's in the audience and it's very nice to be here and thank you for that kind introduction you reminded me of some things about myself that I had forgotten so that's always I'm reading I usually read one of the things that's happened to me from living in the u.s. of an honest so that my attention span has become significantly reduced and so I am now unable to read one book and sustained interest in it reading something else I'm reading I usually read a novel nonfiction poetry all at the same time this is not something I recommend well there's law students too harshly so I think sometimes it can take from the pleasure it works for me but I wonder sometimes if I'm if it means that I don't get the full pleasure of all of the boots you know but anyway um so I'm reading I mean if you imagine a book about gender in Nigeria me female husbands male wives or something it's cold and the poetry that I'm reading is by an african-american poet called Terence Hays I'm also reading tree seekies Smith's poetry because when I'm when I write fiction I write I like to read poetry more than fiction because I'm worried about the possibility of unplanned influence and I actually just finished reading a novel by it's called salt house it's a really lovely novel it's about it's it's I think it really humanizes the Palestinian story it's it's it has a white boy the setting is sort of sixty years of the family's life from from Palestine and then some of them moved to Kuwait and there but it's it's I found it quite a beautiful novel I've just finished that and I'm not sure what I'm going to read next I'm probably going to read Elizabeth Hardwick who I deeply deeply admire and of course in addition to writing he also lead workshops in Nigeria every summer and can you maybe point us in the direction of any sort of emerging talents from Nigeria and what have some what are the new things that these writers are doing they're doing one of the things I find really exciting about my workshops is first of all so many people apply there's so much talent and and I my vision for it is a very pan-african vision so and and for me pan-africanism doesn't end with the continent it ends it includes the people whose forebears came from the continent and I've just been amazed by the talent and it's also a broad range of people writing about modern life in Nigeria right thing about what it means to be gay and and what it means to to live between that sort of that tension of having come back from abroad that's an idea what it means to try and become Nigerian again people rising but so it's really it's it's so broad and so exciting if I hold I there's a young writer called as a makan you know who actually is now acting so I think we might have lost her she's very she's very good I'll send you this Lisa that's fine and will circulate but what I can tell you that the state of literature in Nigeria is that literature Nigeria's well healthy and so in terms of sort of new directions I mean I've noticed that there's been a plethora of writing that's plus and after future is for science fiction I know that I've heard an interview say you're not a massive fan of the science fiction is a genre but it struck me reading the short story ghost and then the thing around your neck that there's a kind of a supernatural element they're not science fiction but sort of part of a broader speculative fiction and I wondered if if we can expect any more of that kind of writing from you I I don't know I and I think it's very imposing it very politely saying I'm not a massive fan I don't like it okay I just I just can't do science fiction of saronite I and I completely respect that this is something people like and actually at my workshop I try to have one or two people who do science fiction but I don't also feel equipped to help them it's a sort of shape their story well because I don't know what the hell is going on I think I have a philosophical objections science fiction we just say that in a world in which anything can happen then anything can happen and and and and fans of science fiction have said to me no you build the wall then it has its own rules in the way that sort of natural laws apply when you write realistic fiction but I just don't but I think for me the story ghost doesn't really a certain kind of speculative fiction but but if you think of it in terms of evil ebo cosmology it's real the ghost is real yeah and and I think of it when I think about when people talk about magical realism and their many societies in the world in which what we call magical realism the West isn't magical at all it's a vector of Overmind J for example in in Poland and the idea that a child is born and keeps coming back and if you talk about that in sort of Western circles is supposed to to couch it in the language of but actually for people in that world it's not magical it's perfectly real and normal and so I don't know if I'm going to do anymore it's actually two fiction well you're right though that there is that there is there's a new flowering of African science fiction and fantasy and I am I'm happy for any writing to happen sir and I mean the point you raised there about the one person's reality and could be seen as like magical realism in another context I mean that sort of ties in with the conversations around the decolonizing like shifting the center censoring different realities and not always reading everything through the lens of view of the West and that's part of a conversation that's taking place across Britain now there's a sort of student-led movement to decolonize on universities and I wondered if somebody who's grown up on a university campus and of course the universities in Nigeria had to go through a process of decolonize decolonization after independence I wonder if if you have any thoughts on on this process of decolonizing I don't know what should does it take exactly in this country what is it I mean in universities in Britain many students are querying or questioning the censoring of sort of in English problem for example the Canon and the you know it's sort of sometimes tokenistic inclusion of writers from other parts of the world and so rather then maybe diversify the curriculum actually completely rethinking the structure well I grew up in a Sukkah and so kind of in some ways was different because in suka is actually interesting dizziness University so it it started off with a certain various deeply influenced by the us because it was mostly funded by the US but I think that was the the sort of the ethos of the university was one that was Nigerian the idea was to have an institution that was rooted in its Nigerian nurse but here it's the larger point of but I think it's also interesting that in in many Nigerian universities the curriculum could do with some decolonizing so I don't I mean I I I do think it's important to have a wide range of what literature means and to define literature in a very narrow way I think it's a disservice to everyone so and that means that don't just read each other they just meet at each other I mean I think that I think in the u.s. I can't I can see for the you kicks I do not know it well but I think in the u.s. what happens is you know you have kids in high schools especially they read you know they need to kill a mockingbird they read sort of the read the American books they read Moby Dick they read and then and then they throw in a chipper and then HIV speaks for the whole of Africa or the whole of the global south yeah not yet Africa yeah she poses like it's worse because even for China yeah and I mean we're a new English department and so we're sort of coming into being and developing our own personality and developing our curriculum and if you were given the powers to set up an English department or to set up a Department of literature what might it look like what would you call it because there's also a debate around whether or not we should call these departments English and what that means to call it an English problem as opposed to maybe a literature department so this is the reason why I'm not an academic I just I feel like academics spent so much time to beating this sort of thing and meanwhile just right outside view problems I know I don't want to be different because I do think it mattered to a certain extent I do you think it matters because because representation matters and symbolism matters right if I had that power and I do like to have power I but but it's different I mean english and literature those are two very different things so this is an English department is it also a literature department and it's not just English literature so it's literature's in English the department of wards but what I would do and I try to do this when I teach writing is to have is to have students have a wide range of what they read I remember teaching and I did a fellowship at Princeton so I thought I told writing for a semester and I remember some of the students just being surprised one one student said to me I had them read Patrick sham sham was so yes and I shot story and I remember what students saying to me oh I didn't know people from their root books so he didn't think that people from the Caribbean wrote books and and he was you know the sort of young earnest person and I remember thinking you've probably got a very good high school now you're in Princeton you're you are part of the sort of extensibility needs that will go on to rule the world and you and at this stage you don't know that people in the Caribbean right okay I found that quite remarkable so I just think it's really important to have that to know that the world is not this tiny bubble in which one lives and and literature is such a wonderful love humanizing the world you know you read and I think at the end of that that semester I think the students had changed in just the way they thought about what is often in academic circles called the other and I mean in the danger of a single story you speak about the power of literature and the power of Western literature Zepeda construct an Africa that is other yeah and this and this sort of engagement with the ongoing legacy of colonization is something the features throughout your work and I wonder if you could just say say something say a few words on what drives you to write those kinds of stories and and sort of what you see that legacy to be in infant contemporary Nigeria now I think what drives me simply is the kind of of passion and what I feel strongly about so growing up in Nigeria and having a very firm sense of who I was and where it came from I grew up in a ball and I and I grew up in a university community so there was a sense in which it was also quite cosmopolitan and and but it was deeply rooted in its evilness and so I grew up very much aware of who I was and what I was and and grew up quite proud of being you know an evil woman and but also I was a Latin aware of how you know for example in primary school you weren't supposed to speak the vernacular except for an e-book class and I remember even then finding it ridiculous you know that you could be punished for doing what speaking the vernacular it looks like it stupid because this vernacular is actually your language but what it does what it does is that there's something insidious that it can do to you it can it can mess up your head can make you start to think that what is yours is something for which to feel shame and and I think I resisted that from very early on and there's a sense in which I wanted my walk to also be a kind of resistance to that kind of idea so I threw in evil words in my novels because I wanted to create the texture of the world I was writing about because in my world my I speak one English often at the same time often in the same sentence and so I wanted to capture that in my in my fiction and I remember when my first novel was finished my my very kind American editor said to me and it's really good but I think we I think we need to take out a lot of the dialects so I then said very nicely what I would like you to say language because it's not a dialect it's a language and then I said to have read so many books recently published in the US in which bits of Spanish were thrown in bits of French why is mine different and when I think about it now I was so grateful to be published because I had a hard time before somebody actually had agreed to publish my book because it would seem to me like your rights and what nobody knows when nigeria is I said when find this well finally somebody this is true though and when finally somebody said yes when I look back now I think I really had some nerve because on the one hand I was very grateful to be published but then on the other I remember thinking no you're not going to take are you in my book and if that is the condition then I'll call you no I'll keep looking because somehow it'll happen but eventually she she understood because I made the case for the the idea that EBU is just as much a language as French and Spanish which is something that instead of the global stage isn't often the case which is also why often when people think about African languages that often results using the word dialect and I find that really irritating but but just other things the idea of what it means to be african and and for me it's not a question of romanticize in Africa or romanticize in our past because there's many things that are wrong that I don't like but it's simply a case of of taking ownership and and you know occupying my own space and and it's an african space it's a space that I am I'm very comfortable in in the world I you know it but I think part of that is because I know who I am and I know where it comes from and I'm from there I can throw go wherever I want and I kind of want my my fiction to to do that I cannot tell you how surprised I was when after Purple Hibiscus was published many Americans just came up to me in surprise you know and and the professor at Hopkins who said to me I don't really believe I don't believe your story and I said to him why he said because it just isn't authentically Africa and just thinking about it now here was this white American man very well-read a professor at Hopkins and he and and here I was African grew up in Nigeria but somehow he was certain that he knew what was effectively African and just to think about it is to to realize but and I think what he meant was that my characters were to actually he said that he said they're too familiar so they they weren't exotic enough and and I and I think this kind of thinking is not just within academia it's the same kind of thinking that makes people who go who travels a consul countries in Africa say things like oh we want to see the authentic African so somehow if you're educated you're not authentic enough so they want to be African in the beads and the the raffia skirts and the dancing and not to say that those are not important but just simply to say that there's something very dangerous about limiting what Africa means to certain kind of exotic stereotype and I mean you're right thing you you do sort of Center in Africa that that sort of reflects say Nigeria that reflects the sort of environment that you were familiar with yeah and and what has that has what impact has that had in nature and I know the first wife okay I mean again here we are looking at Africa through a complex lens are looking at Nigeria through complex lens showing a range of characters with different experiences and how did however major is reacted to your work hmm when half of a Yellow Sun came out my publisher said something you have to be prepared for anything so I remember thinking at my first events in vehicles that they might stone me so I I uh I really I've actually been really I felt grateful and happy about you know I'm I'm red in Nigeria and red in schools as well but what I love is to hear from people who say yours was the first book I had to read for school that I actually enjoyed reading because I know what it's like to go through I remember just I couldn't so it's always lovely to hear that and half of a Yellow Sun I think because it was about this part of our history that so contested still and contentious Biafra it was and I knew writing that book that it would be read not just as literature but as history and I knew that it starts had many intense conversations actually one of the events I did in Lagos was sort of one one part of the wall versus the other part of people just screwing at each other I don't know what my family went through or not you know that all of that and and I like that very much because I think that you should start conversations you should speak to us and and and also I think that literature is a way to talk about things that might be almost impossible to talk about otherwise there are people who couldn't talk about Biafra but when they talked about it using characters in a novel it became doable and and I think I'm Mary common which I wasn't sure would work well in Nigeria because I think I think in it's always it's my most I think it's very nice I mean all of my walk is Nigerian but but because a lot of it is certainly in the US and and some of it in the UK I wasn't sure how it would be but I was very happy shortly after I came out and lived was to see it in in the traffic which was a good sign because when a book is being hopped in traffic in Libya you spoke about Vieira there and you've said that you you've described yourself as having grown up in the shadows of the Ephraim and I just wanted and of course some somewhere cambia for myself with the exhibition and what you were saying resonated with me in terms of having artists as a medium for people to engage and there's a way in which opens up conversations that maybe have been closed down before and I wonder if you can say something about the shadows of Biafra crossed over the nation at large I think one of the things that I was probed by growing up was how little was said about the FRS so on the one hand you knew that it had happened my mother would often vote for my parents a lot of their stories were before the war and after the war and I was tricked by still how little was said so I knew the war had happened I didn't quite know what had happened because things were never said in any detail and never in the clay narrative form it was sort of little bits and and mostly also because of my grandfather I grew up not only my grandfather because he died in a refugee camp in bf4 actually Boonton both my grandfather's died in refugee camps but my father talked a lot about his father so we all grew up kind of knowing everything about our grandfather and and I think as a child that was a part of me that realized that this man who seemed really lovely the reason I didn't know him was because the war had taken him and and maybe that's why I then became haunted by it but in in a larger sense I knew that Nigeria was also a place where you were not supposed to talk about Biafra I don't think anybody ever said to me you cannot but you just knew and when I started researching half of a Yellow Sun if I told people and writing a book about the era that it responds invariable from evil people non evil people what are you doing leave it alone you're looking for trouble leave it alone so just so it was sort of hard to be a friend no no no and I think that kind of hush-hush led to many cases of ignorance people just didn't know people need the wrong thing and in some ways it made me even more determined to write about it and I remember even when I started out to ask questions because I wanted I read everything I could find about me after I looked at the archives I listened to radio broadcasts from that period but then I wanted to talk to people and I remember there was often reluctance especially if he made it clear that you know writing a book about the FRS oh I want you to tell me people would often just start to perform and so I realized that the way to go about it was not to tell them that it was so just to say in 1867 what did you have for breakfast and that that often opened up a different kind of story and that's what I needed for my fiction because I wanted people's stories to give it the heart because I knew the facts from the books but but I think largely what it said to me was that there was just a shard of silence around that period I think it's a bit different now and I think that half of Eila son really contributed to that but there's still I think a lot of stories still untold there's still the opera is still very much a contested even the war to be ever and even the way that we choose to see so I choose to say the 90th year for a war and you can tell from people who choose to say the Nigerian civil war even that means something right because to say the Nigerian civil war is implicitly to say that the era was never a country but I say Nigeria for a war because if I don't say that then somehow I'm not I'm not I'm not honoring my grandfather because my grandfather died in a country that he believed was be Africa it's really we're actually having this conversation earlier Patricia I about the various ways of the smoking and the politics of that and so just on the theme of silence and silencing actually I wanted to touch on the clearance of me to movement and think about or discuss your thoughts on how this whiteness of wind our basically why is feminism now back in siddhis with the public consciousness why deserves of growth of feminist activism what is it about this moment that has created around the world this eruption do you know I think I really think that the American president is a major part of that [Laughter] because somebody at this table is an American it must be held responsible I really think has contributed to that simply by being president the person participant who is who we know as molested women because we know from what he said but who also just I think um well there's that but but also just represents a certain kind of sort of casual ugly misogyny you know a person who you can just tell doesn't think very much of women in the way they speaks about women in the way that you can do it's so obvious and I think to have that person then ascent to this position over just enormous power I think it did something and and and maybe the first manifestation of that was that the women's match in all all across the u.s. it just felt so I couldn't believe how many people came out and I just the depth of feeling and so I think that's actually been a major reason but I also think that there's been a kind of incremental progression in in the awareness of of the fact that there's still a lot to be done I thought that that idea that somehow the gender is fine women okay everything's fine which i think was a lie that the West told itself for some decades I think people started to realize actually it's a really big lie and so incremental II and then it seems to me that the American president became the kind of the catalyst that just made more things happen and do you see this as an enduring movement or is it just the current I hope it's enduring I don't know I I find myself feeling cautiously optimistic but I I don't know I think just knowing enough about justice movements and what happens is there's progress and then suddenly you just find that there's that everything seems to be regressing I hoped it's it's I hope it's the start of a real revolution I know that people sometimes talk about all this backlash all this backlash and just feel like well so what there's always back well you know the point is simply to keep pressing forward but but I don't know I hope so I wish we had I want us to have more stories I want us to have more conversations about about me too and what I mean is to say that often in in the media people will say oh he's been accused of sexual misconduct I don't know what that means what a what a sexual misconduct me and and I think language matters because if we shroud what happens in this kind of opaque language it's very easy for people the backlash will happen more because people will be like oh it's a witch-hunt we don't know you know he didn't do anything maybe he just smiled at her and now he's been fired you know so I feel like we need to hear the stories we need to know what the hell happened and and and also we need to be able to make the distinction between what is consensual and what is not because you know the people who've said for example there was a letter written by the French women who said oh it means women can't have sexual lives and I thought actually means so has nothing to do with women's sexual lives when you walk into a man's office and he brings out his penis it has nothing to do with the woman's desire because nobody's asked her if she wants to see the double penis so so I kind of feel that we need to have more stories and more conversations and and use less opaque language and and you know that also that it translates to serious policy that when people are hired all of that I don't know you know I don't know I hope so and just so the conversation around language I wanted to sort of discuss with you you're embracing of the term feminism and feminist and just a sort of couched in in within 90 and women writers circles someone like preaching a machete who famously said oh if I'm going to be called a feminist I'll be with a small F and I remember reading I think diplomatic patter pounds on the back you'd written something where you describe yourself as a black African happy feminist so what made you sort of drop the black African African happy and just just be a feminist well because actually part of that all of those sort of qualifiers that I had used were I mean there were half in jest but they also spoke to what I think is the stereotype feminism that when I said I was a feminist somebody who said to me Oh feminist such as women who cannot find husbands they're just angry with me they're women who don't shave their legs the women who don't you know where children's you know that kind of thing and so I found myself having to say you know and then they'll say to me it's not African which I found very stupid and so I then started to say well I'm an African feminist and then I'm gonna have to be happy feminist oh I'm a feminist who likes lipstick and the feminists to like slip you know and but the point was it was my way of sort of poking fun at the stereotypes I choose feminists because I like the dictionary meaning and because I think we need a ward around which to rally but it's also not it wasn't done without acknowledging that it's also a loaded ward because all of its history but it's its history in the West I think because Western feminism is the only feminism that's been so well documented people often think it's the only feminism so people have said to me and I would like you to speak to the second wave mother was walking in Nigeria when Americans we're doing the second with I don't even know what that means made so it's the narrative of the Western narrative of feminism is not mine I don't I don't I don't mean I don't identify with it I did not become a feminist because I read some Western texts I became a feminist because I my world and I just didn't understand why women and men were not treated the same way so I choose feminists because you know I mean that there but but I think that to choose that is not to say that I don't recognize things like the the racism of Western feminism and the racism in in in the history of Western feminism where women of color were really excluded and where often women in the discourse meant white women which actually hasn't really changed very much in political discourse in America so they'll say to you women voted 72% and blood people voted it is a and then I'm thinking wait hold on where am I because they do it all the time because there's some tion and it's almost automatic that women means white women and then there's black people and somehow black women got forgotten in the middle like wait where do we fit in you know and and also no it's not but I like the word feminist they're people who have said oh why don't you say you're a womanist because you know Alice Walker said woman isn't and I don't I don't want to partly because their interpretations of Womanism that I'm not comfortable with I think that it kind of can make a fetish of sort of women and you know facility and motherhood and I'm a mother and I and I think it's glorious but I don't think that motherhood should define what it means to be a woman because there many women who choose not to be mothers and we should respect that so I there's a lot about sort of them and also because I think that there are things that women of all races and classes can identify with that's why I like feminism I think that they're things that that I can talk to a white woman from Norway about that my black brother will not get because you just want and so because of that I really do believe in a kind of overarching idea of of women having similar experiences and I think it's really just about socialization that if the world sees you as a woman is at war too in a particular way other things kind of get in the way right so which is why for example 52% of white women footed for for the American president and it's not it's not the woman part of them that did that it's the white part and you spoken about how your feminism is very much rooted in your Evo Nigerian African heritage and I think it's quite it's for me it's the kind of the ship that's taken place in terms of as you mentioned feminism had been structured I've been presented as something that happened in the West and then was almost exported to Africa and African women then emancipated and then that was the order of things and I think it's fascinating now that for example we should all be feminists that's given to schoolchildren in Sweden and so the kind of shift or it albeit a small shift but that I think is beautiful and I'm so grateful for that being a part of this this shift and and I wonder how has your your talks in your your writing on feminism been received in major again because you're writing from that context yes not very well I mean wants to destroy marriages and it's true it's actually I mean I get all kinds of things like you so there's a and I've met quite a few sort of parents older people who said to me I just love you and I'm very worried about this it's me mitosis follow everything you say you know sometimes my daughter's argue with us and then they start by saying Chimamanda says and then and then they tell me were worried because we worry that they will never get married and and even them saying that for me I think is so sad that still with you know ostensibly progressive parents there's a sense in which girls lives are still not giving full value until somehow marriage has validated it you know it's still it's still such a sad thing I think that they're they're young they're young and young women who are telling their stories speaking up you know but I know that feminism is just not if you make the choice to publicly identify as feminists you have to be prepared for hostility it just did that's anywhere in the world by the way not just Nigeria so when I when I sort of came out as feminist I knew that I see when I give that TED talk I remember right after what this couple coming to me and this man just very unhappy now you're saying and I think people get uncomfortable with the idea of disrupt in this day to school and of course they're men who think that they're going to lose out in some way and if you're in if you've been thrust in a position of privilege that you haven't really earned you don't want to lose it and so there's a sense in which I understand why they feel that way but I'm um I'm also kind of hopeful because we should all be feminists did very well in Nigeria and it's often something that I mean I know young people are constantly debating are you a feminist well will you not cook for your husband and a lot of these conversations I find to be just infantile but what the fact that we are in fact having those conversations the fact that feminist is a war that has familiars many many people in Nigeria now in a way that wasn't the case seven years ago I find that very hopeful and also that men are coming on board and that's something that for me it's very it's a reason for hope because I think we can change everything we want for women and girls if we don't change mine on boys then there's no point and and I have had so the stories that give me hope so each time I hear back from somebody who said oh she wants to destroy marriages or she's on African or that sort of thing and I also find that a lot of the the hostility is it comes in the language of silence and people say um Emily needs to shut up I stop talking about men and and it's like even that is very gendered right so often I say to myself even what you're saying it's proof that we need feminism right but there are also men who I have spoken to who've said to me you know now I'm starting to think about it and you know and they seem to think yes and and there's a man who said to me fairly recently I think I'm a feminist I never thought I would say that and and for me it's hope I think that if it's change one mind is hope it's progress because it just means that you know there's the possibility of people being happier of justice and just to sort of go back to the United States I'm sorry to after that hopeful words written but I'm just thinking about again in this moment we spoken about some feminism in this moment and in this moment of Trump and the wall in this moment of brexit in Britain and the sort of politicization of the borders and again thinking about your short story American Embassy which is very much about power and borders I wonder if you can offer us some some of our thoughts on where we are globally intensive sort of the stringent increasingly stringent policing of borders and the and some the push for national identities and loss of almost humanity and our understanding of people in movements and what if you can it's very sad when I think you say it really well there's a loss of humanity I think particularly in the discourse around refugees and immigrants there's a kind of dehumanization that just breaks my heart that people are spoken about as though they're not people we just lose and and I think and it's you know I I do think that I understand to a certain extent that we collectively have made I think the choice to live in nation-states and and nation-states necessarily require borders of some sort and so for me it's not even the case of all borders should be completely open but it's simply a case for a humanizing people be realizing that actually there's room for people right I mean there's a lot of when people talk the whole the hordes of people are coming that's actually not really true if you look at the numbers and then there's a part of me that sort of things if we look at we take a long historical look at it 150 years ago you came to Africa without visas nobody invited you you want you took resources the consequences of which people are still living with today and so if you sort of look at human histories is it's sort of like a cycle it's not that surprising that 150 years later they would like to come visit you to say that maybe we should start to think that maybe the discourse should should have that shape because people often talk about it like oh my god it's terrible it's not that surprising you know we should read some history actually it's a lot more benign this time if you ask me and I'm just going to shortly open up the session to the audience for questions and answers but my final question would be are you optimistic about the future and with all that we've spoken about sort of global changes are underway are we heading to global destruction or is this a new dawn I want to be hopeful because I have a daughter and I want her to live in a better world than I've lived in and I think that there's some reasons to be hopeful so the one hand so for example the American president the American presidency disastrous as it is because now it's actually it's worse than a Banana Republic and that now is an idea and I'm kind of proud because I'm like oh that would never happen in Nigeria I mean before in Nigeria we would say oh go to America Americans will never do this nonsense now even we have some checks and balances but but but but even that disastrous as it is I think we can think of it just as been disastrous oh we can also think of it as having become this catalyst for certain kind of change that many people who are running for office in America who never would have where I live my American home they're all of these are grassroots movements people meeting and and talking about how are we going to unseat this Congress person how the women running for office there's the young people who are determined to votes now there is a new I think kind of a new consciousness about just taking responsibility for your police future so so in some ways I'm hoping that maybe this will give rise to something else and in Europe I kind of mean I don't know enough of a brexit because I'm absolutely confused by it as always but I think that but I think that even that because I remember reading the news I'm thinking the people who supported it two days later were confused about what to do afterwards so maybe I don't know maybe the lessons to be learned maybe it means I don't know what will happen Drex it happens every night even our politicians don't know yeah yeah I'm just concerned about my visa okay so let's open up to the audience for questions are there any questions we have microphones so I might take a couple of questions at a time are there any students on BA English with a question if not why not okay so good night someone I owe me one so one two to start with yeah yep and we'll do one two three what did three hi hello in your short story the thing around your neck you say that America gives and takes I was curious thinking about the fact that your work in America what you have achieved has given you a platform given you a voice that is perhaps much larger than it might have been if it hadn't had a presence in America I guess I wonder what you feel it's taken from you but I'm also often concerned about being asked about what is in my fiction because there's context right and it's about the character not really me I might I often have characters who say and do things that I don't agree with so I'm always not I don't necessarily agree with that bit I don't remember writing me but I think it's true I think America needs some paints but what may I just say that well I I'm very grateful that America has given me I think I've also given to America and I say this because there's a part of me that gets irritated when people aren't you just so grateful that it's happened and it's a question that people have color gets theirs I don't and I know you haven't my dope I know you don't mean that at all but I just wanted to I took it as an opportunity to just give one of my rants and it's something that often happens to people of color where and the underlying thing it happens a lot in the US and this just the episode underlying idea that you haven't quite earned something that something was given to you but with whiteness that says never questioned you know you're never asked aren't you so grateful you know I tried very hard to get a publisher and they kept rejecting me and then finally this woman said I will take a chance on you and two weeks later a publisher had bought the book and then it was published and and I think even my publisher my first publisher shocked that that the book totally independent booksellers bestseller lists because I think they just thought maybe really wants to read about Nigeria we just published this because we will feel very ward two very noble we published a book by an African what has it taken it's taken from me my ability to concentrate and focus it's America is just that way it's taken from me my ability to write longhand because I was forced to type when I went to undergrad so now I it's so hard to write longhand I used to write my stories there's a romance to write in longhand but I miss but I think it's really also just and it may be it's not you didn't I don't want to put it in a very simplistic way taking but the idea that America forces identity on you it has it's good and it's bad fact that I had to become black in America you know and that I wasn't really prepared for it when I got there I didn't really understand being black because I came from Nigeria where I was only born I was a Catholic Christian and those were the identities I grew up with and suddenly to go to the US and to become black and to have to learn what it meant because it means something and to have to resist certain things that that's a particularly American experience and yeah an America I think has also I just wanted to ask something about the importance of language as writers and journalists is so how do you think the importance in the way we use our detectives nouns and words in general can shape the perception and the cause of feminism itself all around the world I think about myself when I have to write an article I'm very much careful the words I use in to support women causes or feminism in general but I've seen many and many articles like words and describing things and so just like Oh example that was women's oh the skirts she was wearing or she didn't do the dishes dishes so the husband the kinder so this kind of way of reporting news or reporting women's issues or in general I think you can apply everywhere so how do you think it really literally shape the way we perceive feminism and we can help feminism itself I think language is always important it's always important to question the language that one uses and I find myself in writing nonfiction I don't do with fiction because fiction for me is art and but with nonfiction I I do try to be careful because I think also the way that we've been socialized I think that we're all that misogyny is in the air we breathe in the world and so we breathe in research any women and men and that sometimes it's so unconscious we don't even know and I think you can come in the kind of unconscious language that we use and and I find myself wanting to be very careful and sometimes feeling I mean any it's you know little examples like a friend of mine said she was telling me that she had been to the doctor and she said it's in Hebrew and evil pronouns are not gender specific so and she said you're the one I mean the doctor was good and all is is the pronoun and then I switched to English and I said so what did he say and so my friend starts laughing and she said the doctor was a woman and I remember just feeling ashamed of myself I thought Here I am my damn feminist icon I still Garron and I tell people and and and and it was unconscious and so contact it's that thing having to you know the doctor can in fact be a woman okay but the socialization that I've received my entire life the idea that you know sort of maleness comes first you know even just that it's a tiny example but I think even that is it's important to you know constantly remind oneself because that's the way and if we do that and if younger people coming up hopefully at some point the generations coming up will not need to do that because they need to be normal for them hi I'm a big fan first of all and I just wanted to say as a black Nigerian woman in America do you find that there is like an almost a battle of the stereotypes of black women so you have you for example uneducated women a writer and then you have the women that you see on reality TV do you think there's a plateau in the depiction of how black women are portrayed and perceived and do you feel you're in that battle yeah I mean I know I do it I know too many women black women who are not like that I don't feel threatened by those depictions I think I do think that there is often can sometimes feel to me like a conspiracy in the media especially the US media to portray blackness in a particular way you can often feel like that to me I mean I'm not a conspiracy theory so denial II but I sometimes wonder would I feel that their understanding of what blackness is is very narrow so there's sort of you know in some ways it's similar to the professor saying to me authentic African characters so there's suddenly you know authentic blackness means you must have a you know a hardscrabble life story and then you have to talk in a particular way and it helps if you can make do the moves and and you know the black men who can a black women who can't and I just feel like that it's changing a little you know because we have amazing people in the world like Shonda Rhimes she's really changing what it means to be a black woman on television so I would deeply and strongly recommend that you perhaps stop watching the real issues what's what's something that what's something that Shonda what's something that Shonda has done or something that Ava Duvernay has done hello thank you so much it just excited about I love your work I absolutely adore your writing and my questions a bit cheeky I'm a snob of Americana was published in 2013 and since then we've had two non fictions yeah we should all be feminists and Jerry generally which are I believe transcript of public works if released I want you to expect please mascius please thank you I would tell you but then I would have to kill you I I don't know you know I'm asking myself that as well when will the next I don't know I'm I'm trying my best just keep me in your prayers when I my question will be regarding your bookshop you night workshop in Nigeria coming from them from African parent I know that is some is very common that some in some African family the young we encouraged you know their key to do light for instance you have to be doctor or you have to be like lawyer and I just want to know like how may be doing your work your workshop in Nigeria it might change the perception we know some pain or you know older generation may have on no become a writer I think it's changed a little what the thing about Nigerian parents is and I think African parents in general is that if they become convinced that it's possible to earn money from doing something they will immediately become supportive so I think across Africa there many parents who now when the children say I want to be a musician they're like yes go to the studio how much do you need to give the producer because I think you might be the next wizkid or something and I'm hoping that I do that for right thing but that but but actually it to be more to be more serious because it's always writing is not music I mean and especially writing sort of literary serious fiction there are many people who it's it's rare to be able to earn a living from writes in literary fiction and so what I generally say to people who want to write on the continent is that it's not such a bad thing to have another job all right and it's probably to be a bit more difficult because then you have to but then many writers outside of Africa have have jobs they teach because they can't make a living from from writing and I've heard from many young people who said that their parents have been a bit more supportive because because they have said to their parents I'm going to be the next Chimamanda and the parents think okay that's you know not too bad so I think it has changed perceptions actually I think it's it's change perceptions quite a bit and also that there's just a flowering of writing that there are many more books being published that you're going to a bookshop illegals and then many books by Nigerian writers and so the idea of writer has become a thing in a way that it wasn't I would say like 15 years ago but but we're still it's still a work in progress I think that we we still need walk to get to wizkid levels I'm just curious about the idea of the Canon and in particular so-called canonical works about Africa so in particular heart of darkness and things fall apart so what I was wondering is obviously your work has got like international currency do you feel that your work is having a conversation with that sort of linear but those works have come before you and you think your work is shedding light on anything that they might have been missing thus far well I don't consider heart of darkness to be a book about Africa I think it's a book of other European imagination I and I don't think of my walk has been in conversation with anybody's book really I I don't even think that people who write necessarily think of their books in that way I think academics think of books in that way and and I do I mean you know and I think it's it's an interesting thing I have heard I have learned things about my own walk from listening see people talk about it something like really so I also don't want to think in that way cuz I think it I think it gets in the way of your creativity I think it gets in the way of what I like to call it of reaching the the truth and the core of your art just to think about you know am i am i responding to a chi bear or am i I do have to say that that Purple Hibiscus was I started off Purple Hibiscus with the line and things began to fall apart because I just wanted to pay tribute to a man whose walk I adore but I don't know if I'm in conversation with him or certainly not with Conrad I don't think but and then the last question okay so we'll do three months so I'll let you pick we haven't done any from this side of him okay so then what do you think he um so I wanted to pick up on the point that you made about pan-africanism not ending in the continent that includes all of us and as somebody who's well one of my parents is from Nigeria and my other parent is English and I've been born and raised in the UK and I'm not fluent in narubu and I often get a lot of questions saying like how can you be interested in pan-africanism and you're not really African and those sort of questions those sort of questions that people ask that you were talking about as well about how you almost have to prove that you're authentically African and I was wondering what your ideas were about like how we can engage more in that idea of like intersectional pan-african feminism and essentially like combating those ideas about having to prove your authenticity as an African or as a Nigerian in general yeah I think it's I think it's by questioning what African means I and also by acknowledging that are having differences in African neces doesn't then mean invalidating the African nests if that makes sense I think for example that so if they see that you're not African what did they say that you are no white people no you're not a white girl the many Nigerians who live in Niger the entire lives whose parents do not seek them out to speak you over no but it's true there's a growing middle class of Nigerian so we're not teaching their children that languages so next time they ask you that tell them that but also I think it's important for us to I mean that that feminism and African s and all of these things can be a very broad room there I often find that the Africans in the Diaspora who are much more interested in African s much more committed to African less than Africans in Africa and increasingly I want to measure identity using the yardstick of commitment not jollof rice you

Channel: IgboConference

Views: 58,236

Rating: 4.8638744 out of 5

Keywords: Chimamanda Adichie, Feminism, English department City University of London, Igbo Conference, African Literature, Half of a yellow sun, Igbo women, Creative writing

Id: W0KXRGNlUpQ

Length: 68min 36sec (4116 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2018